


Brilliant Girls Who Ought to Be Spies

by igrockspock



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Bechdel Test Pass, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-25 00:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3790237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma Simmons could haved gone to Oxford or MIT.  She could have worked for Stark Industries or MI6.  Instead she chose SHIELD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brilliant Girls Who Ought to Be Spies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkvoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkvoices/gifts).



> Hi inkvoices! Ages ago, at the MCU Women's Ficathon, you left a prompt about why Jemma ended up at SHIELD. I loved the idea, but I couldn't get the story finished in time for reveals. I hope you enjoy it even though it's late.

Jemma Simmons hated Oxford University as soon as she stepped foot on its manicured campus. She was thirteen and knew she would take her A-levels at fifteen. She could've done it earlier, really, but Mum and Dad said fifteen was quite early enough to be leaving the house, thank you very much. Privately, Jemma was relieved; publically, she pitched a fit that her parents said proved she wasn't as mature as she thought she was, and then they agreed to take her to visit Oxford on the next bank holiday.

Jemma knew what was supposed to happen: she was supposed to feel a sudden thrill of belonging and recognition, like a Muggleborn witch must feel when she walked into Hogwarts for the first time. Jemma had cried when she hadn't gotten a Hogwarts letter on her eleventh birthday. Her mother had rubbed her back and explained that Jemma felt different because she _was_ different from the other children, but she was a genius, not a witch. Going to university -- a really good one, like Oxford -- would be her Hogwarts because everyone there would love to learn as much as she did, and making friends would be loads easier and she would never have to cry about not getting invited to sleepovers.

It all sounded very promising until Jemma saw the ancient stone buildings and the boys punting on the Thames and the neat signs that said when you were allowed to lie on the lawn. It all seemed very venerable, and she didn't want to be squashed under the weight of so much tradition. She wanted to have adventures and be herself.

***

At fourteen, Jemma applied for an internship at Stark Industries (without telling her parents, of course). The HR department said her portfolio was very impressive indeed, but they simply could not be responsible for minor children. Jemma bristled at the word _child_ ; she understood concepts that few adults could grasp, and it wasn't fair that the world wanted her to wait so long to grow into her brain. But SI had one unassailable argument: Los Angeles had very little public transportation, and Jemma was too young to drive.

If she couldn't work at Stark, she'd have to settle for the next best thing: visiting their exhibit at the World's Fair in Japan. Her parents gaped when she said they should take their summer holiday so far away, but Jemma had already made a budget spreadsheet and an itinerary. What could they do but say yes?

She approached the SI booth with her portfolio tucked under her arm. Even though the HR lady had been very kind and reasonable, Jemma couldn't shake the belief that if she just _talked_ to someone, she could make them see how bright she was, and they'd change their minds and take her on.

It might have worked, if the Stark exhibition hadn’t been attacked by an evil robot. Jemma fled as a miniature arc reactor went up in flames, and when she dropped her portfolio, she didn’t go back to get it. Oxford wasn’t enough adventure, but working for Iron Man might be a bit too much.

***

Jemma was fifteen when MI6 invited her to a recruitment event. The simple white notecard appeared in her maths book, and she almost didn’t notice because it had been ages since she had use for such a rudimentary text.

 _Tell no one where you are going,_ the message instructed. _This will be your first test._ Underneath, in small black print, it said _this message will self-destruct in thirty seconds._

Jemma huffed. How could a piece of paper know when it had been read? It was ridiculous, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from it. At first, she thought she was imagining the wisp of gray smoke drifting up from the corner of the notecard. A second later, the whole thing had burst into flames. She lunged for her water glass and knocked it over, and when she looked again, the card was gone. There was no blemish on the table and only the barest trace of ash.

 _Magic_ , she thought. She shook her head. It was science, and she would go to London to find out how it worked. Somehow. Without telling her parents. Even though she was a horrible liar.

***

The morning of the recruitment fair, Jemma was so nervous she could hardly choke down her toast.

"Jemma, whatever is the matter?" her mother asked. 

"Nothing," Jemma said hastily. She could already feel her face turning red.

Her mother put her hands on her hips. "Don't lie to me, young lady," she said.

"I -- don't -- I --" Jemma stammered. She stood up suddenly and tried to fling her napkin down on the table, but it drifted lazily onto the floor. Jemma wasn't one to litter, so she bent down to pick it up, only to knock her fork onto the floor. She stood up with as much dignity as she could muster.

"I'm going to uni next year. I'm almost grown. I don't have to tell you everything," she said.

Her mother's eyes widened. So did Jemma's. And then, before either of them had a chance to say anything else, she snatched her bag from its hook in the kitchen and marched out the door. Then she froze. She turned and looked back at the house. The door didn't open. Her father didn't chase after her shouting about disrespect. She ran all the way to the train station.

***

At MI6, a boy with a physics book under his arm asked what Jemma thought about Fibonacci sequences and a girl showed her a computer program she'd designed to make artwork from tessellations. The lab was sleek and white and stocked with every kind of equipment Jemma had ever imagined, and none of the adults suggested that she wasn't as clever as she thought she was.

When a man named Q came to lead them on a tour of recent breakthroughs, the whole room went silent. There was a bomb the size of a pencil eraser. Contact lenses with built-in laser sights. An umbrella that could launch exploding arrows.

"All of these things are for killing people," Jemma burst out. There was an awkward silence, and then Q asked who wanted to try their hand at mixing an exploding martini. A nice woman in a white coat led Jemma outside when she refused.

***

When Jemma turned sixteen, she spent her gap year at an American biotech firm. She had applications in at CalTech and MIT, and Waseda University in Tokyo. Learning Japanese couldn't be _that_ much harder than biochemistry, right? And she'd fit in at one of them. She simply _had_ to. Either that or she'd adopt a dozen cats and step as gracefully as possible into her predestined role as a mad scientist and crazy cat lady, she thought irritably, bracing a stack of manila folders more carefully against her hip.

Academically, her internship was a smashing success. Cyberdine, Inc. developed hi-tech prosthetic limbs for soldiers injured in combat. Though Jemma was by far the youngest intern, she held the most important job: monitoring the sites where the prosthetics' cybernetic wiring was grafted into the recipients' own nervous system. Of course, her monitoring was done remotely, mostly by looking at microscopic slides and endless print-outs of lab reports. The patients would be unnerved if they knew a teenager was in charge of their medical care, the chief doctor explained. Jemma had nodded as agreeably as she could and went on delivering stacks of manila folders to the resident physicians every morning.

At least the lab work kept her isolated from the other interns, whose chief amusement was asking Jemma to pronounce things. _How do British people say 'table?'_ Almost exactly the same as Americans, thank you. _My god, she's only sixteen! Have you ever had a drink before?_ Yes, loads, the drinking age at home is fourteen. _Loads?! How adorable! Can you teach us some more British slang?_

Once Jemma had lost her temper and asked quite pointedly whether they all carried Bibles and handguns. The humor had been lost on them; one girl actually procured a Bible from her handbag, a Jewish boy had been terribly offended, and the big intern from Texas invited her to the firing range -- not ironically, as Jemma had assumed, but sincerely. Because firing ranges existed and were not merely made up for American films, and some Americans really _did_ have guns. It was all strange and unfamiliar and a bit scary, and Jemma started to wonder if she would have been happier at Oxford after all.

That was what she was thinking about when she ran into the security guard. Her stack of manila folders flew into the air, and pages of lab reports skittered across the floor.

"I am so sorry," Jemma stammered. She crouched on the floor, stuffing papers back into folders. Her face had flushed bright red, and she didn't dare look up.

"No, it's totally my fault. I wasn't looking where I was going," the guard said. It was a woman's voice, and Jemma looked up.

"Kara," the guard said, holding out her hand.

"I know," Jemma said stupidly. She'd noticed Kara weeks ago; she had olive skin and large dark eyes and long straight hair and, well, sometimes Jemma liked to look at girls as much as she liked to look at boys, even though she hadn't quite figured out what that meant.

"Oh god, have we met before?" Kara asked, looking chagrinned. "I have the worst memory for names." 

"No." Jemma shook her head, stammering again. "I just -- well, I've seen it on your name tag. I tend to, ah, remember things."

"Oh." Kara smiled. "You must be Jemma, that sixteen-year-old everyone's talking about."

Jemma bristled, waiting for the obligatory demeaning comment, but none came. Kara only shook her head and passed her a stack of disorganized papers.

"I'm really sorry again. It's probably going to take you hours to sort these out," she said. "You should come by my place after work. Let's have a drink and let me make it up to you."

Jemma froze. A social invitation shouldn't be awkward, she told herself firmly. Just because no one at school had ever invited her anywhere didn't mean she couldn't respond like a normal human being. But what was she supposed to _say _? It's a date? But it wasn't a date. It would be my pleasure? Too formal; she wasn't the Queen of England. _Say something_ , she told herself frantically -- if she waited any longer, Kara would think she didn't want to come.__

__But Kara only nudged her in the ribs with an elbow. "I'm not taking no for an answer. It's not healthy for you to stay here till seven o'clock every night, and anyway, everyone else here is weird. I need someone nice to talk to."_ _

__"All right," Jemma said, taking a deep breath. She could manage being someone nice to talk to._ _

____

***

Kara lived in an efficiency unit on the edge of town. The building looked rundown, and Jemma's legs ached from pedaling her bike so far.

Kara opened the door wearing cut-off jean shorts and a baseball jersey emblazoned with the number 33. 

Jemma blurted the first thought that came to mind. "You look so American. I should take a picture of you for my parents." She winced. "God, what a perfectly stupid thing to say. I mean, of course you look American. You _are_ American. It's like when all the other interns make me say things with my accent, except of course, it's not an accent to me...and, oh, I'm rambling."

Kara laughed. "It's alright, Jemma. Just let me get a can of Bud and a baseball bat before you get out the camera." She looked down at Jemma's bicycle and winced. "And now it's my turn to apologize. I should've come to pick you up."

She wheeled the bike into the narrow hallway, motioning Jemma to come inside. There was only one room, dominated by a battered couch and scattered laundry. A video game controller lay on the coffee table, and the TV screen said PAUSE.

Kara gestured expansively toward the living room. "Make yourself at home. Just throw something on the floor if you can't find a place to sit." She walked into the narrow kitchen and opened the fridge. "I wasn't kidding about the Bud, by the way. Want one?"

She passed a can to Jemma without waiting for an answer and curled up on one end of the couch. "So, what do you think of Cyberdine?" she asked, popping open her can.

Jemma shifted a stack of t-shirts out of the way and settled onto the edge of the couch. "Well, it's quite nice, of course. A bit strict, with all the non-disclosure agreements and locked doors and such... But ultimately quite fulfilling, to know we're working to help people." She smiled as widely as she could.

Kara shook her head. " _You_ are a terrible liar, and I'm not a corporate spy. You know they're weird. Just admit it."

Jemma traced her finger around the edge of her can and forced a chuckle. "Weird how? You think they're up to something?"

Kara snorted. "If you asked me that, you obviously do."

"It sounds crazy," Jemma said. She popped open her beer even though she had a terrible suspicion it would be disgusting.

"Go on, lay it on me. Give me your wackiest conspiracy theory," Kara said. Her smile was so wide and encouraging that Jemma couldn't help but be drawn in. 

"I'm not supposed to talk to patients, you know, but this one woman kept ringing her call button, and Dr. Singh was too busy, so I thought I'd see if she needed anything. And she had the strangest story. She said she'd been out at the bar with her friends, and she'd choked one of them with her prosthetic hand. She didn't remember wanting to do it, but suddenly she was, and she couldn't tell her hand to let go. She couldn't even pry the fingers lose. Her friend almost _died_." Jemma shuddered, remembering the look of horror on the woman's face.

Kara's eyes were wide. "Did you report it to Dr. Singh?"

Jemma nodded. "She said the woman had brain trauma from Iraq, and a history of erratic behavior. She was discharged from the study the next day."

"But it still bothers you?" Kara asked.

"Of course it does. I just keep thinking how horrible it would be to hurt someone like that and not even want to." Jemma shook her head and took a sip of her beer. It wasn't as terrible as she had expected, but she had to force herself not to pull a face. It didn't taste right ice cold.

Kara nodded sympathetically. "You know, the number of NDA's they made us sign is crazy, even for a tech firm. I've been working security since I was eighteen, trying to save up for college, and I've never worked any place this paranoid. If you think they're up to something, you're probably right." She finished her beer and dropped the sweaty can on the coffee table without a coaster. Jemma tried not to wince. 

Jemma forced herself to take a long drink of beer. As the buzzing swirled down to her limbs, she took a deep breath. If Cyberdine _was_ up to something, she ought to speak up, right? More likely than not, Kara would tell her she was imagining things and she could go back to work with a clean conscience.

"The thing is, that woman isn't the only patient who's complained about their hand acting outside their control. Dr. Singh leaves files open on her computer sometimes. I've seen them."

Kara looked intent. "How many others?"

"At least three that I know of." Jemma shifted in her seat. "I know this sounds insane, but there have been a number of high profile...incidents recently. Do you remember those two Senators who were strangled? The newspaper said their tracheas were crushed by some superhuman force."

"Whoa." Kara leaned back against the cushions of the couch. "You think Cyberdine is making evil hands? Is that even possible?"

Jemma swirled her beer can and was surprised to find it empty. She'd been so intent on sharing her conspiracy theory that she barely remembered drinking it. "I suppose," she said thoughtfully. "The prosthetics are supposed to be controlled by a microprocessor grafted to the central nervous system, but it's like any other computer really -- if someone hacked into it, they could give it all sorts of commands." And then she was off on some terrible, rambling monologue about synaptic impulses and neural disruptions. She must've talked for five minutes before she came to her senses. 

"I am so sorry," Jemma murmured, blushing. "You must have been dreadfully bored."

But Kara looked wild and excited. She tilted her head and spoke to the ceiling. "Vic? Vic, did you get all that? I told you if anyone could figure this out, it would be her. I'm bringing her down now. Call Agent Washington at the Academy, okay? She'll want to know about this one."

With that, Kara snatched Jemma's wrist and pulled her off the couch. As she bent over, Jemma caught a glimpse of an earpiece in her ear and her stomach clenched. Kara was obviously more than a Cyberdine security guard. Was she an FBI agent? Corporate security? Was she about to be arrested?

Jemma followed numbly as Kara tugged her out the door and up the rusted iron staircase to the second level of the building. She paused in front of the entrance to number seventy-nine, and Jemma thought she saw a laser beam from a retinal scanner. Then the door swung open. On the other side stood a stern-looking woman with a streak of magenta in her long brown hair.

The woman looked at Kara and frowned. "Agent Thirty-Three, I have told you multiple times to refrain from wearing apparel with your agent number while undercover. And while on assignment, you are to address me as Agent Hand, _not_ Vic." She turned toward Jemma, who flinched. "And you must be Ms. Simmons."

"Am I under arrest?" Jemma stammered.

Agent Hand's smile was sharp. "Certainly not, though with the help of your information, the heads of Cyberdine, Inc. will be soon. Victoria Hand, Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. Colloquially known as SHIELD."

She held out a hand, and Jemma shook it uncertainly. "SHIELD?" she asked, feeling lost.

"We are a secret intelligence organization beyond the control of any single national government," Agent Hand said. "Our mission is nothing less than to harness the power of human intellect and creativity to stop evil anywhere and everywhere."

"And you have an Academy?" Jemma asked weakly. Maybe she wasn't being arrested. Maybe she was being recruited.

Kara slapped her on the back. "We sure do," she said. "Welcome to the team."


End file.
